460 The Loom of Language
Though it discouraged some, Volapuk also stimulated others to set
out along new paths More than one disillusioned Volapukist recovered
to undertake the task which Schleyer had executed with maladroit
results One ex-Volapuk enthusiast, Julius Lott, invented Mundolingue
(1890) It was a neo-Latin language A moderately well-educated
person can quite easily read it, as the following specimen shows.
Amabil amico,
Con grand satisfaction mi ha lect tei letter de le mundohngue Le
possibilita de un universal hngue pro le civihsat nations ne esse dubitabil,
nam noi ha tor elements pro un tal hngue m nostri hngues, sciences, etc
Another language which owed its existence to Volapuk renegades
was Idiom Neutral (1903) It was designed by members of the Akademt
International de lingu universal This body came into being at the Second
Volapuk Congress. When it developed heretic doctrines the great
Datuval (inventor) unsuccessfully excommunicated the rebels The
claim of Idiom Neutral in its own time was that it had a vocabulary
based on the principle of greatest international currency The reader
who compares Schleyer's version of the opening words of the Lord's
Prayer (p 458) with the following can see how completely it had grown
apart from Volapuk
Nostr patr kel es in sieh' Ke votr nom es sanktifiked, ke votr regma
vem, ke votr volu es fasied, kuale in siel, tale et su ter
ESPERANTO
The collapse of Volapuk left the field clear for Esperanto Esperanto
was the child of Dr. Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof, a Russian-Polish Jew
(1859-1917) He put forward his first proposals when Father Schleyer's
invention was at the height of its popularity Zamenhof had spent his
early youth at Bielostock, where Russians, Poles, Germans, and Jews
hated and ill-treated one another Reinforced by a humanitarian out-
look, this distasteful expenence stimulated the young pioneer to recon-
cile racial antagonisms by getting people to adopt a neutral medium of
common understanding Incubation was long and painful He was still
at grammar-school when inspiration dawned So it was natural to seek
a solution in revival of one or other of the two classical languages
Slowly Zamenhof learned to recognize the chaotic superfluity of forms
in, natural speech It was English which opened young Zamenhof's
eyes:
I learnt French and German as a child, and could not then make
comparisons or draw conclusions, but when, in the fifth class at the